LASG Co-hosted 2016 Chengdu International Workshop on Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO)

2016 International Workshop on Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) was held in Chengdu from 6 to 9 August. The meeting, co-hosted by the State Key Laboratory of Numerical Modeling for Atmospheric Sciences and Geophysical Fluid Dynamics (LASG), the Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP), Chinese Academy of sciences (CAS) and Chengdu University of Information Technology (CUIT), aimed to synthesize current understanding of dynamics of the MJO, its impacts on global weather andclimate, and its prediction capabilities to gauge the progress in its study to be made in the coming decade.

Prof. Ziniu Xiao,Director ofLASG and Chair of the Local Organizing Committee of the workshop,announced the opening of the workshop and presided over the opening ceremony. CAS AcademicianChongyin Li, co-chairs of the workshop, Prof. Jianxin He, Vice President of CUIT, and Dr. Chaolin Zhang from National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) gave opening remarks respectively.

The workshop was organized into eight sessions (Overviews, Impacts on Weather-Climate, Observations over the Maritime Continent, Extratropical Intraseasonal Oscillation, Dynamics, Theories, Modeling, Prediction and Predictability) and a poster session. 128 participants from 39 institutes and universities of 7 countries attended the workshop. 37 talks and 29 posters were presented.Participants provided updates on current MJO studies, overviewed MJO studies in the past decades and discussed its potential role for the upcoming future two-year (spanning 2017-2019) field campaign called Years of the Maritime Continent (YMC).

Some further research recommendations were proposed during the workshop including following aspects: (1) Multi-scale interaction in MJO dynamics should be further explored as it may play a central role in the initiation of the primary MJO events as well as the eastward propagation of MJO events. (2)Current theoretical studies of MJO need to be strengthened as they are not sufficient for explaining the convective initiation of MJO. (3) Physical mechanisms for the Maritime Continent barrier effect and its exaggeration in numerical models and the dynamics that determine MJO behavior over the MC need to be further explored. It is expected that the YMC field campaign will be intensively engaged and provide solid basis for observation.

Prof. Chidong Zhang from University of Miami, the co-chair of the workshop, made concluding remarks at the end of the meeting.
Insummary, most recent progress in MJO study were presented and the gaps in our knowledge of understanding its global impact, dynamics, and predictability were identified.

More about the workshop could be found at: http://www.lasg.ac.cn/mjo-workshop/

Group Photo

Opening Remarks by Experts

Meeting Venue